Ruwudu

Try Ruwudu

Weights and styles

• Regular 400Ruwudu Regular
• Medium 500Ruwudu Medium
• SemiBold 600Ruwudu SemiBold
• Bold 700Ruwudu Bold

About Ruwudu

Ruwudu is an Arabic-script typeface family with a serif Latin companion. Its purpose, according to the official notes, is to give West African languages that use the Rubutun Kano style of Arabic writing an open font of their own; it contains the characters known to be used by those languages and may lack characters other languages need. Shaping rules built into the fonts adjust the form and position of characters automatically. The Latin letters in the specimen are an old-style serif with moderate contrast, bracketed serifs and a Q whose tail curls under the bowl. Four static weights are provided, Regular 400, Medium 500, SemiBold 600 and Bold 700, with no italic. The fonts hold 898 glyphs. SIL International is the publisher, the name table credits Becca Hirsbrunner Spalinger as designer, and the license is the SIL Open Font License 1.1.

Where Ruwudu works

Books in West African Arabic script

The character set was chosen for languages written in the Rubutun Kano style, so their texts can be set without substitute glyphs.

Teaching and literacy material

Regular and Medium give two text weights for readers, primers and worksheets, with Bold for headings.

Bilingual Arabic and Latin pages

A serif Latin alphabet in the same four weights sits beside the Arabic for glosses, page numbers and credits.

Community publishing

The open license lets local presses and websites bundle and redistribute the fonts with their publications.

Glyphs

Language support

The family contains the core letters these languages are written with:

• English
• French
• German
• Spanish
• Portuguese
• Italian
• Dutch
• Swedish
• Norwegian
• Danish
• Finnish
• Icelandic
• Catalan
• Estonian

Writing systems with glyphs in the family besides Latin: Arabic. These are listed as scripts, not as a promise for every language written in them.

Character sets found in the files: arabic, latin. The language list is a check of required letters against the font, not a promise of typographic quality in each language.

License

Fonts that pair with Ruwudu

Suggestions come from simple rules on the records: a contrasting classification and enough weights to carry body text. They are a starting point, not a verdict.

Use Ruwudu on the web

Download the family and host the files on your own site, then declare them in CSS. Please do not link to the files on trendhub.net: preview files here are subsets and their addresses change.

@font-face {
  font-family: "Ruwudu";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/Ruwudu-Bold.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 700;
  font-style: normal;
  font-display: swap;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: "Ruwudu";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/Ruwudu-Medium.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 500;
  font-style: normal;
  font-display: swap;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: "Ruwudu";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/Ruwudu-Regular.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 400;
  font-style: normal;
  font-display: swap;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: "Ruwudu";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/Ruwudu-SemiBold.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 600;
  font-style: normal;
  font-display: swap;
}

body {
  font-family: "Ruwudu", serif;
}

Or load it from the official source. Google Fonts serves Ruwudu with this markup:

<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com">
<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.gstatic.com" crossorigin>
<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Ruwudu:wght@400;500;600;700&display=swap" rel="stylesheet">

Things to know

Regional Arabic coverage

The Arabic repertoire targets languages using the Rubutun Kano style; the official notes warn that other languages may find characters missing.

Four weights, no italic

The cuts are 400, 500, 600 and 700. There is no italic or slanted style.

Basic Latin only

The Latin side covers the basic subset for languages such as English and French; Latin Extended letters are not included.

Needs shaping support

Character forms and positions are adjusted by rules inside the font, so the text must be set in software that applies complex-script shaping.

FAQs

Similar fonts

Other families in the same classification, ordered by shared use tags. All serif fonts